Christina Simmonds

Christina Simmonds made a grand introduction and tried to right any preconceptions we may have already made about UKIP. She said that ‘politics has become narrow’ and that we needed to ‘bring back democracy’. UKIP stands for ‘sovereignty’.

Christina was very calm when answering questions, even when being goaded by Martin Horwood. When answering the first question Christina put forward UKIP’s plans to abolish tuition fees completely for Medicine, Science and IT. In return these students would need to work in the UK for a certain period of time.

The subject of the economy then arose; UKIP’s stance is to ‘increase spending on defence’. She mentioned needing more intelligence as we were facing ‘unknown threats’.

The UKIP candidate echoed all of the fellow candidates by stating that the Cheltenham A&E should be reinstated. She very much believed that we should ‘take back ownership to the public domain’ and that we should ‘never have to pay to see a GP’.

The fourth question raised much debate amongst other candidates and Christina was very clear where her party stood on the matter ‘our borders need to be managed’. She thought that a points system for all countries should be instated. The UKIP candidate believes firmly in leaving the EU so that this points system could be introduced.